“Do our parts learn how to act and relate to each other from the environment we grew up in?”
Paul writes:
“One trouble I often have with Focusing is in saying ‘Hello’ to a part, especially a highly charged part that is reacting strongly to something. Saying ‘Hello’ is a basic first step of Focusing, but for me, that has often been very hard and not within my capability at that moment.
“I searched for answers and opened my Focusing Student’s & Companion’s Manual. What I found there, on page 8, fascinated me. Acknowledging is basically saying “you are there”; saying “Hello” is when we truly begin to engage and begin a relationship with It directly. A light bulb went on for me! By sensing into what doesn’t want to say “Hello” to a highly charged, reactive part, it came to me I also have a part that considers the reactive one to have been causing me way too much trouble already, so it doesn’t want to say “Hello” to It.
“What I’ve described to you as an event internal to myself is the very same dynamic I’ve experienced countless times with another person, especially in my family of origin. One person is highly charged, even demanding, the other person will not engage directly, and if pushed may acknowledge the other, but grudgingly at best. My mother was a person who would, when angry, fall into silent treatment mode and could barely be convinced to even acknowledge the existence of the person she was angry with. I see how every member of my family does this to some degree in how we relate to others.
“So I have a question: Do our parts learn how to act and relate to each other from the environment we grew up in?”
Dear Paul,
Absolutely! It seems to me there are two reasons for this.
The first reason, rather obvious perhaps, is that we learn to relate to anything and anyone by how we are treated and what kind of relationships we see around us. It would be surprising if we did not.
But the second reason is that when we were treated in dysfunctional ways, ways that went against our own inborn sense of rightness, it was traumatic. And because there were not the resources available for that trauma to be healed at the time, various parts sprang into existence to help us survive and to try to get at least part of what we needed.
When you do Focusing with that part you discovered, the one that wants to give the “silent treatment” to the reactive, highly charged part, I’d suggest inviting it to let you know what it is worried about. In other words, what it is worried will happen if it interacts directly with the reactive part. You may feel a bit as if you are tapping into how it was for your mother… but it isn’t your mother herself you are sensing into here, but the part of you that learned from her how to be, and did so partly because that was safer.
And then there is the part of you that gets reactive and highly charged. Once you really know you are not identified with the part that disapproves of it (because you’ve said a nice Hello to that one and maybe spent even more time), you might say to it that it is allowed to be as reactive and highly charged as it wants to be, for as long as it wants to. Then gently invite it to let you know what it is about reacting that way that feels so good, so important, so needful.
I predict that you will find that both parts are longing for YOU (as Self-in-Presence) to show up, and that part of what has them both so charged up is the lack of a space of acceptance, where they have permission to be exactly as they are. In a space of acceptance (you are that space), all the parts can relax enough for the next steps of life-direction to be sensed and come forward from within.